Your Right to Know

WASHINGTON — Sen. Rob Portman indicated yesterday he would oppose President Barack Obama’s call
for an increase in the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, saying it could discourage companies
from hiring younger workers.

In a conference call with Ohio reporters, Portman, R-Ohio, said he might consider an increase in
the current minimum wage of $7.25 an hour if it were attached to “a package which would include
incentives to hire.”

But he warned that “if we raise the minimum wage too high and too fast, you’ll have less
employment,” adding that “the reality is just over half the people on minimum wage are young people
between 16 and 24. A lot of them are folks who need that work.”

Portman’s opposition puts him at odds with Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, who has campaigned
energetically for an increase in the minimum wage.

Brown said last month that Ohio workers earning the state’s minimum wage of $7.95 an hour make
roughly $16,000 a year, which he said “isn’t much to live on when you’re trying to put food on the
table, fill your gas tank, send your children to school, and provide a safe place for them to
live."

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, fewer than 4.5 million people age 16 or older who
were paid an hourly wage in 2010 were paid at or just below the federal minimum wage. Federal law
exempts some workers from the minimum wage, such as small-farm workers and baby sitters.

But the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal nonprofit organization in Washington, said
increasing the federal minimum wage could lead to raises for as many as 30 million hourly
workers.

That is because Ohio and many other states have a higher minimum wage than the federal law
requires but lower than Obama’s proposed $10.10 an hour.